EERSTE ANJELIERSDWARSSTRAAT 36 AMSTERDAM NL

Roos van der Vliet

Roos van der Vliet (b. 1985) is a Dutch artist, based in Arnhem, the Netherlands. She got her BFA in 2009, and has been painting ever since. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the USA. Although she doesn’t consider herself a hyperrealist, she does get lost in the details everytime she paints. She wants to get so close to the reality she’s presenting, that it almost feels real. The eyes must look back, hair must look like it’s touchable. It has something to do with the ...read more

Roos van der Vliet (b. 1985) is a Dutch artist, based in Arnhem, the Netherlands. She got her BFA in 2009, and has been painting ever since. Her work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the USA. Although she doesn’t consider herself a hyperrealist, she does get lost in the details everytime she paints. She wants to get so close to the reality she’s presenting, that it almost feels real. The eyes must look back, hair must look like it’s touchable. It has something to do with the feeling of alienation she gets when looking at the world around her. Life is so enigmatic, and by watching it from close up, reproducing that reality, it seems to give her more control over it. Like when she’s creating something real, it makes her more real.

Roos is merely known for her ‘Storyteller’ portraits in which women stare through the confines of their hair with a striking gaze.
By letting these portraits speak to the viewer in a non-verbal language, their piercing eyes almost force the viewer to stand still and look back.

There are a few elements that keep coming back in all of her works, Roos explains. Anonymity being one of them. Struggling with the unimportance of being human, while at the same time we tend to make ourselves the center of the universe. Outside versus inside is another one. How we are used to judge a book on the cover, and how that cover could never match the inner world. And, what she considers the most important theme, is the desire to be seen and heard, to be visible, but on the other hand the constant urge to hide from the world and close the curtains, to hide under the blankets.